🍻When I used to work in a bar, typically in December you would see overworked colleagues, some of them working in 2 or more jobs, sometimes not sleeping and then coming back into work the next day.
🍸And usually in January, it all went quiet.
Some of the staff had no shift for the week and some of my colleagues were crying saying she won’t be able to pay for her bills.
🤝This was despite them having a contract stating that they will at least have 50% +- of their contracted hours.
🗓All of our work is done on a contract basis, we do not offer people casual work ONLY. Of course we still offer our clients occasional deep cleans and seasonal cleans.
🛏We used to do airbnb jobs and end-of-tenancy cleanings. These jobs were great when I was the one doing the job, mobile, with a van, picking up keys, picking up my staff to help me with the job, dropping them off to their evening office cleaning jobs, putting beddings in, running around like crazy.
⏰I often stayed up past midnight just to get the cleanings done. And I had my bar job as well. Sometimes I came back at 2am and then had to wake up at 5am for the next morning.
💩This lifestyle is not sustainable. But some people do live like this. When you are young maybe, just maybe you could live like this for a while but despite that, I was overworked, tired, I made mistakes often during this time. A lot of the times I had near misses with the van. Especially when I was stressed and in rush.
☕️Adrenaline and coffees(lots of it) kept me going but I could feel my brain just working too much and I was overloaded.
😊But during the day I was always working with my staff, and this was the reason I was able to keep doing what I was doing.
💙I was able to do this long hours because it was my business, because it was something that I was building, so that I can provide more people with a secure and job that they enjoy coming into. It was great to see my staff coming into work and working hard, and enjoying the work. I had so much fun working together doing deep cleans, student flats and holiday accommodations.
💭But imagine you are working for someone else, and have to work like this. And you are on a zero-hour contract, no guarantee that you will have shift next week. So you work at whatever shift you are offered because you are not sure if you will have any work the next week.
👍All of our staff have guaranteed hours of the week. All of our work are now on a contract. It is much better for building their future, they can plan, they can schedule things to do because they know exactly when they will be working.
🤒Of course there’s times when someone’s ill and there will be last minute shifts etc but they are all happy to help each other because they know that we have their back. They know that if they become ill there will be someone to look after them so they do the same.
❤️This is the sort of culture we are creating in our company.
💪🏻We look after each other. People are not just the space that fills the shifts.
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